When life gets me down, I go running. I have a collection of comedy podcasts which I plug into, as the dog and I make our way round the local hills at rather a sedate pace. My favourite is a show that is as old as me: the BBC's I’m Sorry I Haven't A Clue. It's a panel of very clever, very funny people doing very silly things. For me, it is the best medicine for climate anxiety.

To live in a time of climate crisis is to compartmentalize. If, like me, you spend many of your waking hours thinking about climate, it exerts a heavy toll. The news of what is already afoot, the wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and floods. The predictions for the future – within my own lifetime, and in the lifetime of my children. The intransigence of the response from politicians, media and many people. It goes round and round in my head, and I have to switch off. When I take time off work, I can feel myself disconnecting from climate change too, and it is a relief.

Responding to climate change is about balancing this dual reality: acknowledging the enormity of climate change, without being overwhelmed. But it is a difficult balance. Those of us who work on climate daily are stalked by it. Others keep it at a distance, or laugh it off with quips about the end of the world.

One of the frustrations of my research is that many university colleagues do not share my sense of urgency or immediacy. I vividly remember, early in my project, sharing some initial findings at a university seminar. I thought long and hard, and decided to talk to my colleagues about the dilemma that I discussed in Chapter Three: given our dependence on huge amounts of energy and on a stable climate system, how can we imagine or discuss a climate-changed future? My colleagues listened politely, but I found the discussion frustrating. They seemed to be locked into their safe, stable worlds, wanting a good intellectual debate, but not wanting to take this leap into imagining, or asking fundamental questions about our existence on this planet.